Video: Wiping your Drupal installation clean

It's easy to get Drupal off your computer for any reason. For example, if your Drupal installation sensitive data that you need to destroy. You just need to remove data in two places, the Drupal file system and Drupal's database. First the file system, that's easy enough to get rid of. Since all the files that Drupal uses are contained within the Drupal folder itself. Just move that or throw it away and it's gone. I'll show you how to do that on our installation. First, we go to the finder and hide everything else and here we see the Drupal folder, inside it or all of its files.

Drupal is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) for a variety of platforms. It has a robust user community and easy-to-use administration features. Drupal Essential Training covers all the important aspects of installing, configuring, customizing, and maintaining a Drupal-powered website. Instructor Tom Geller explores blogs, discussion forums, member profiles, and other features while demonstrating the steps required to make Drupal perform. He also teaches fundamental concepts and skills along the way, including installation, backups, and updates; security and permissions; flexible page layouts and CSS; menu navigation; and performance monitoring and disaster recovery. He also discusses how to select and install the community-supported modules that further expand Drupal's capabilities, and gives experienced PHP programmers tips on customizing page templates. Example files accompany the course.

Wiping your Drupal installation clean

It's easy to get Drupal off your computer for any reason. For example, if yourDrupal installation sensitive data that you need to destroy. You just need toremove data in two places, the Drupal file system and Drupal's database. Firstthe file system, that's easy enough to get rid of. Since all the files thatDrupal uses are contained within the Drupal folder itself. Just move that orthrow it away and it's gone. I'll show you how to do that on our installation.First, we go to the finder and hide everything else and here we see the Drupalfolder, inside it or all of its files.

To get rid of it on Mac, we'll just grab it and drag it to the Trash. And on aWindows machine, we would highlight it, right click, and select Delete. Thenwhen we empty the Trash, it's gone. However, the database's content is actuallystill on the computer in a separate database file. For complete security,you'll need to get rid of that. In SQL jargon to delete a database, you dropit. We'll do so through phpMyAdmin. To get to phpMyAdmin you switch to MAMP orif you are on Windows, WAMP. You then click Open Start Page and click on thephpMyAdmin link; from there, go to Databases and select the database you usefor Drupal.

Ours is named Drupal; then just click on Drop and you'll get a warning becauseremember you are going to destroy all of the data in that database. That's whatwe want to do, so we'll click OK. Now your Drupal site is completely gone. Ifyou want to remove all traces of it from ever having been on your computer, youwould also need to undo changes you made in the file system in order to makeDrupal run the way you want it.For example, you might have needed to change some of Apache's files, in orderto make clean URL's work. But honestly leaving in such changes generally won'tcause problems for others or give away any secret content. The password to yourdatabase was stored in the Drupal folder, so it's already gone. As is thedatabase and all of your site's content itself.

Q: While following along to the installation instructions in the “Installing WAMP and Drupal on Windows” chapter in the Drupal Essential Training title, an error occurs when attempting to open the local host page. Nothing appears except for an error reading “WAMPSERVER server offline.” What is causing this?

Q: After installing XAMPP and running Drupal for the first time, the Administration menu does not appear. What is the reason for this?

A: There are several possible problems. Here are some likely solutions. (These may also solve problems encountered with other AMP stacks.)

Increase XAMPP's PHP allocation.

Check to make sure all XAMPP's paths are correct and that permissions are correct. If the database information appears, but not Drupal's supporting files, and an included theme is being used, the supporting files will be in the /modules folder.

Q: In the "Using the example files" movie, the method of importing information to the database is shown, using the backup in Chapter 10. When attempting to do this, the following error is shown: "No data was received to import. Either no file name was submitted, or the file size exceeded the maximum size permitted by your PHP configuration. See FAQ 1.16." The system is running the latest versions of Apache, PhP and MySQL, on Windows Vista. What could be causing the problem?

That's especially true if you're using WAMP, which only gives PHP 2MB of memory, when it really needs at least 16MB.

You'll see the issue if you go to the MySQL-controlling phpMyAdmin screen (probably at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin) and click "Import": The maximum file size allowed is 2,048K. That's only 2MB, and the databases for most Drupal sites are much larger than that. (The example site for Drupal Essential Training gets as big as 5MB.) The video "Installing WAMP and Drupal on Windows" shows (at around 3:30) where the php.ini file is, but here are some more-complete instructions to increase that memory limit.

Click the WAMP icon in your system tray.

Select "PHP". In the side menu, select "php.ini" to open a file containing PHP's configuration options.

Now go back to that "Import" screen in phpMyAdmin: You should notice that the limit has changed.

Q: I don't remember the default username and password used demonstrate Drupal.

A: The default username used in the course is "admin"; the default password is "booth".

Q: How can I change Drupal's administrative username and password?

A: If for some reason the default exercise file username (admin) and password (booth) don't work, you can change them in the database itself using phpMyAdmin. (This technique is demonstrated in a video from Chapter 8, "Recovering from disasters".)

Open your Drupal database with phpMyAdmin.

Go to the "users" table. Click the Browse icon.

For the row where uid = 1, click the Edit icon. (Note the value under the "Name" column: That's the administrator's username.)

In the "pass" row, select "MD5" under the "Function" column

In the same row, enter your new password under the "Value" column.

At the bottom of the screen, click the "Go" button. You should now be able to log in with that username and new password.

Q: In Windows Vista, the WAMP icon disappears from the system tray after a certain amount of time. How do I get it to reappear?

A: To make the WAMP icon reappear (so that you can access localhost, phpmyadmin, php.ini, etc.), you have to activate the "start WAMP server" icon (from start menu, desktop or wherever). The system tray icon will reappear.

Q: My .htaccess file disappeared. What caused this?

A: A few times during the Drupal Essential Training video series, the instructor says to copy a Drupal installation by selecting all the files in the folder and then "dragging and dropping" them, either to a server or another location on your local computer. This is not the best way to do so, as the hidden file ".htaccess" will not be copied.

There are two ways to get around that problem:

When installing Drupal for the first time: Instead of copying files from the Drupal folder, move the entire folder to its target location and rename it. This is the easiest solution for those without experience with Unix.

Use the command-line interface to copy the .htaccess file.

Sorry for the error.

Q: In the video, the instructor says the current version of Drupal is 6.3, but on the drupal.org site, the latest version is 6.17. Which is the newer version of Drupal?

A: Drupal 6.17 is newer than version 6.3. For some reason, the the version numbers go 6.3, 6.4... 6.9, 6.10... 6.17. It’s counter-intuitive, but that’s the order.

Q: My WAMP phpMyadmin will not allow me to upload the exercise files. It returns this message: "No data was received to import. Either no file name was submitted, or the file size exceeded the maximum size permitted by your PHP configuration. See FAQ 1.16." There was no previous database to drop, so what do I need to do to make this work?

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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